Chapter 37 : Spirit Detective

Yusuke was pissed off. Nothing more to it than that. He couldn't even call himself a middle school punk, not since Dekuyume had convinced everyone that it was in their best interests to pull Yusuke and Kuwabara from school and take advantage of the fact that Dekuyume was still a fully qualified teacher. Best decision ever, as a sensei she cut straight through all of the bullshit and actually made learning what he needed to pass their scheduled tests interesting. And she made sure that he learned what he needed to, so he wasn't left looking like an idiot with his thumb up his ass, when it came to the shit someone should have taught him before he became Spirit Detective and had to deal with so many types of yōkai on a daily basis.

He wasn't going to lie, some of that shit had been way worse than anything the old hag had thrown at him, and Genkai had thrown him into a pit of snakes. He was even more unnerved by how often the blue streaks had ghosted across his vision, and how he would always find her watching him over the edge of a fan when they happened, as if she knew what he was waiting for. But she never said anything, and he sure as hell wasn't going to ask, it had only taken one question from Keiko before Dekuyume had Keiko twisted around and blushing in embarrassment as she admitted to knowing exactly what parts of that insect yōkai she had ripped off. It was both a turn on, because damn that girl took Puu's safety seriously, and a source of terror, because damn that girl took Puu's safety seriously.

No matter what he had been shown as proof, he had still been a little doubtful when it came to the freaky behavior Dekuyume claimed was perfectly normal for some yōkai, like kitsune and mixed gender community bathing. But Kurama had confirmed everything that he could, and when even the kitsune was stumped about the truth of something, the crazy fox had asked to sit in on the lessons when he could.

But no matter how embarrassing that had been, and the test she had given the two of them to figure out where they were education wise had been really fucking embarrassing when she scored them, it was nowhere on the same level of how fucking angry he was right this damn minute. Because no one had told him about who had been Spirit Detective before him, and Sensui had wiped the floor with him and Kuwabara at the same time. He had caught the two of them as they left the shrine for the weekend, headed off to the arcade to celebrate the crazy good scores they had gotten on their first test set, and the looks that had been on their previous teachers faces as they handed them back.

No one was going to be looking for them until Monday. when neither one of them showed up at the shrine. And as Itsuki drags Kuwabara away for his turn to be tortured by the crazy bastard's asshole personality. Yusuke coughs up blood and wonders if either one of them was going to survive that long. Neither one of them had answers for the questions that the former Spirit Detective was asking. Sure, either one of them could take the beatings, but being forced to watch helplessly as it was being dished on the other one, was killing both of them.

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It had been a long time since he had seen carnage this bad. He was going to probably going to puke. Koenma forced himself to keep going though, he owed it to the SDF that had been slaughtered. His eyes close as he stands in the center and embraces his domain, the echoes of the souls who had passed through this bloodstained stretch of concrete are made known to him, and finally, he knows just why it is that none of his people had been able to find the open portal to the makai. As he leaves the bodies to be bagged by ogres, he finds that the price they had to pay for that information was too high.

He has his attending ferry girl create a portal to the Higurashi Shrine, hoping desperately that they would not find Botan's corpse in the mess he leaves behind, because like Yusuke and Kuwabara, she was missing too.

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The situation only got darker when he spoke to the kami that had taken the time to teach Yusuke and Kuwabara. Even darker than what he had expected, because while he had known that Kuwabara potentially had the ability to cut through the barrier that remained the mortal plains last defense… He had not known that the boy was the reincarnation of a dimensional witch. But he should have, it answered so many of his questions about just what it was in Kuwabara that had released the first seal on Yusuke's Mazoku heritage the first time, blaming it on the flavor of his magic, without ever taking the time to think about why the boy would have magic like that in the first place.

It was an angry Kagome that greeted him at the bottom of the stairs, her human consort beside her. "The barrier between your domain and the mortal plain is nothing. If anyone manages to give him a reason to, there is nothing he won't be able to cut with that sword of his. Including the thin film that separates the mortal and immortal plains. The worst part isn't the ability, it's the fact that swords are meant to cleave two things apart, not bring them back together again. Not even a trip back in time could fix something of that magnitude. Some things just can't be undone, not even by time." He was sent away soon after, his only reassurance that Sōta, Hiei and Kurama had already run off to rescue their two friends.

The sharp stinging in his pride as a kami, when he realized that instead of going to him, Botan had run to the Higurashi Shrine for help the moment Sensui had attacked the SDF, was nothing compared to how relieved that he had been when the exhausted ferry girl had timidly offered to make him a portal back to The Spirit World.

He felt so tiny as she knelt and held him as he cried tears of relief. It hurt as she tried to convince him that everything was going to be ok, that his father couldn't possibly spank him for this. Because that wasn't why he was crying, and he wasn't going to be able to convince her otherwise, not like this. He wasn't ever going to be able to stop acting this way and creating situations that kept perpetuating his own failure.

It was time he grew up, not just the bit of essence he kept stealing from his Enma aspect only to give back because being an adult was too difficult. It didn't matter how dangerous it was with their impending conflict with the three kings who ruled over the makai, he would just have to choke down his pride and ask Kiyoshi-san for a favor. It would be humiliating, doing so after the Higurashi had just finished cleaning up another one of his messes, but keeping himself split into two aspects like this wasn't doing him any good. He only kept failing the people he was supposed to be taking care of, and himself.

Wiping his eyes in a manner that was perfectly in line with his physical age, Koenma pulled away. Botan is left with mixed feelings as the little kami turns and heads up the stairs of the shrine in a way that had her remembering all of the knots she had tied in time with Kagome, and that Koenma and Enma had been known singularly as Yama once.